Time to Get my Kit Together

Truly, "back in the day", as we are now wont to say, rather than "when I was a kid", or "in the roaring 60's",  the phrase was

GET YOUR KIT TOGETHER

That's when guys carried "kit" bags, because kit became an easier word to use than "dunnage". This is a great historical explanation of my title and has nothing to do otherwise with today's blog, which is really about getting it together, picking it up and doing the right thing with it.


I try to listen to my favorite TV preacher (also is Alice Cooper's favorite, for a good trivia question), Charles Stanley from First Baptist Atlanta. Of course it is going to be Baptist flavored - he has been a Baptist pastor for over 50 years. My Bible does not tell me what denomination Christ is, though, so I figure after you know that he died for you everything else is rather optional and immaterial in many ways.

BUT

Every now and then Chuck will throw out a "squirmer", as my Dad used to refer to some sermons. This is akin to the Holy Spirit hitting you upside the head with a 2x4 or equally significant wakeup call. Dr. Stanley throws this kind of a squirmer about what God wants us to do about once a year; seems like I always catch it and it rattles in my head for weeks thereafter. I suppose that's why they call it the word of God.

ANYWAY

do not bother to watch this video if you already know what your purpose is in the world, what God has asked you to do, how He is supporting you and exactly where to start and how to go about it. {God told me that, today, He wanted me to send this to you, so here it is}.

http://www.intouch.org/broadcast/this-week-on-tv
 

As always, we appreciate your support and welcome comments. Take 45 minutes to let yourself review, or learn for the first time, some fundamental truths that we tend to overlook in a world, today, that needs them desperately.

And, remember a few fundamentals:

Custom, Routine or Faith?

Thought for the day:
We must be careful when our Christian disciplines become routines. They no longer exist as a part of our faith, but another thing to check off our list of Christian things to do.

We do a lot of things, even the rituals we go through at holidays, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, that we do not consider "Christian disciplines", without really thinking of the why and wherefor. Faith is, among all else, peculiar.

Most Christians are familiar with, or at least have heard, Hebrews 11:
1 ¶  The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. 2  The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd. 3  By faith, we see the world called into existence by God’s word, what we see created by what we don’t see.



This is likely in the same category as Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." And, as Geddy Lee sings, "if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice." So, we believe in something - that is faith - regardless of if we do so consciously and actively, in fact despite our conscious and active attempts to have faith.

We don't make faith. Faith is, like it or not, ask for it or not. It is solely accomplished by the Holy Spirit; for non-Christians who don't believe in the Holy Spirit, any faith you have is accomplished by Him, still, although you think of and refer to him as something else.

 As you go about your "normal" activities of Christmas, then, remind yourself that you do this for reasons other than that you have just always done it this way. Tradition is fine, and remember what family faith originated and sustained that tradition, remember how God brings all these good things to us.

Back just 3 and a half decades ago or so, I was an aspiring graduate student at Virginia Tech. My advisor was Larry Adler; he had started at Columbia University with a degree in math and went on for his master's and then a PhD in Rock Mechanics at the University of Illinois.

His mentor was Steve Boshkov from Columbia. [ http://www.aimehq.org/programs/award/bio/stefan-h-boshkov ] . Larry invited Steve to Blacksburg for a seminar presentation to the graduate and undergraduate mining students. That evening he invited me over for dinner and brandy, so there we were, student, mentor and übermentor. Being young and brash enough to get away with it, I dared ask Steve what was the most important thing in life.

Without flinching he spent 10 minutes holding my fascination and that of Larry as we both just sat listening to the anecdotes that came following this simple statement:

"In life, you do well if you can get along with people, and you do well if you can get along with money. If you can get along with both you do very well. If you can influence either one you are quite successful, and if you can influence both you are phenomenal. That's all there is to it, purely and simply."

Engineers do incredibly well with numbers, and good engineers are the ones who relate those numbers to money and the wealth of their company. Very seldom, though, do you find an engineer who is really good with people. If you do, you make him a manager. But, the engineer who is skilled with money and with people makes himself your manager and proceeds far beyond any expected level. That's why Steve stayed at Columbia, because he could influence the engineering curricula heavily inserting humanities and arts to give engineers what they really needed much more than another course in mechanics or mathematics.

That's about as far as my tired old brain wants to go this morning, especially with my cluster headache meds kicking in, but it should be food for thought for anyone who wants to bother researching the topic even casually. Think about it.
That is all.
Word.

 http://www.redstate.com/dloesch/2013/08/07/wife-of-ft-hood-survivor-dod-is-gagging-us/

Call me crazy, but it seems to me like this would-be king is letting the power go to his head more every day. I can understand the legal discussion behind why he wanted to throw a gag order on the victims of the Ft. Hood heretic treasonal seditionist jihadist, Hassan, but the last time I read the Constitution it still said that the Congress shall pass no law restricting the right to assemble and speak; and, to me that points out fairly succinctly that it is, indeed, the Congress that makes laws, not the President. A king, on the other hand, is different, I suppose, in that what he says from the throne goes no matter how absurd it may be.

In related news:

 I see that The President's city, Chicago, is rapidly taking a lead from Detroit. And, they are leading the league in dead African Americans (black people, persons of color? I never know any more how we are to refer to certain groups). I see that 3 black kids beat up a white kid on the schoolbus, but that the driver did not intervene and the mainstream media didn't report it. Notice that I did not say I was surprised by this happening. Things like this happen every day, more than once, and the only thing I see on TV is "pastor arrested for sexual assault on teenagers" which is about a guy, an assistant youth pastor (general flunky on the staff) that was fired from his position as a youth pastor and later was stupid enough to fool around with a couple of girls to whom he had "ministered" in days of yore. Our friends on TV can sensationalize anything they want to, or subdue everything they want to.

I see Brian Williams is getting a new knee. I see that every night. They certainly did not do 10 minutes with Dr. Nancy Snyderman when I got my new knee. Perhaps that was because it was my left knee and it's Brian's right knee, maybe it's because I am so old that it would not be newsworth, but Brian is so young (!) that we should feel sorry for him.

I could keep going all day. I won't. I'll sign off for now; but, I shall probably be back soon. 

The POTUS decides what?

The evening news made me think of Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth":

What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

The court made two decisions. Neither one of them "legalized gay marriage", despite what the thousands of people in the street are saying. 

One was on Proposition 8 in California. What the court decided was that they could not make a decision because the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to sue. So, the ruling of the inferior court negating Proposition 8 still stands until someone brings the matter to the Supreme Court who has standing to do so. The court made no decision on the merit of Proposition 8 itself.

The other was on DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act. The Court did not negate the act, again as the media and the demonstrators would have you believe. What the court decided was that one provision of DOMA, the which stated that the Federal Government did not have to recognize same sex unions, was found unconstitutional if the union is recognized by the couple's state. That did not mean that the Federal Government legalized or illegalized gay marriage, it just meant that people who have a legitimate marriage license need to be treated as marriage when the Feds apply the Federal laws and regulations.

I am pretty tired of all of this stuff. The Constitution is silent about marriage; that means it is left to the states. And, if you get right down to it, the only reason the states have ever had anything to do with it is to make money by charging for marriage licenses. Historically, marriages belonged in a church, and men (yes, men) would register a marriage to show they owned the spouse as chattel property. Not a really fulfilling and rewarding approach, I say.

Why doesn't the government just get out marriage altogether? We the people are not going to be collectively satisfied with anything they do. Why should they do anything? Why should they even discriminate between married and not married people? 

Oh, I could roll on this forever ...

Hey, guys! I haven't been here for a while. I've been preoccupied with ... well with all kinds of stuff. Politically and religiously so many things are happening that make me want to puke and yet nothing I say is going to change the minds of those whos eminds I think need to be changed. I cannot stand lies, either from the government or from the people/sheeple in response to the government or to their church.

Today I realized something. I was considering one of my pet projects, crusading against human trafficking. I thought:
Sure this is right. A woman is put to work as a prostitute so other people make money off of her, and the traffickers never get caught, the Johns get maybe 5 days or a fine, and the girls, who really don't willingly choose that lifestyle as far as I can tell, get a felony conviction.

People abuse women so punish the women. Hey, why not, because
People use guns to kill other people - ban guns
People eat Big Macs and get fat - ban Big Macs
People drink Big Gulps and get fat and get high blood pressure - ban Big Gulps
People use drugs and hurt themselves and others - ban drugs [may be partially appropriate]
People abuse alcohol and hurt themselves and others - ban alcohol
People drive too fast and kill people - put speed restrictions in car computers.
People use Sudafed to make meth - ban Sudafed
People use pitbulls for dog fights - ban pit bulls

Hey, I think I see a pattern here. There is a common denominator. Actually it's a common parameter, a common factor in each function and it is

PEOPLE

Just when I was about to throw away my women, guns, Big Macs, Big Gulps, drugs, alcohol, car, Sudafed and dog because I am an honest law-abiding person and will do what Senator Feinstein asks. Of course. 

Hey, here's a concept. If people do bad things, punish or rehabilitate the people, not what they used to do those bad things.

Too easy, I guess.

 

Finding Common Ground

"These three ideals – wanting to protect innocents from evil, valuing human life, and cherishing peace – are the same for those who are against guns and for those who are not against guns." - Destinee, of FateOfDestinee

I have a son-in-law who devotes himself to his family and to our LORD. I like to believe that I have and do so also. We concur, as Destinee said, with the three ideals, at least I am pretty sure he does and I know I do. I have never specifically asked, though, about his view of guns, since I am pretty sure we don't share the same views.

I may be wrong. He grew up in Idaho, which is certainly not an eastern bastion of disarmament frenzy like Mayor Bloomberg runs. They really do hunt in Idaho. I am quite sure he is familiar with firearms. Maybe I should ask instead of assuming.

Me, I grew up in Oklahoma. I had the Daisy Red Ryder Carbine (my brother had the pump), we got a Savage/Stevens 15-A for Christmas when I was 9, .22 short/long/long rifle, single shot. We later moved to Wyoming and a friend loaned us a Remington .270 to take with us for hunting. In college, I had a Beretta .25 automatic, a Norwegian 1911 in .45 ACP, a Colt revolver in .45 long Colt, and a Smith and Wesson Highway Patrolman in .357 magnum. After college I picked up a Springfield 1903 in .30-'06 to use hunting. Notice, though, that the Beretta is pretty much only designed and used for personal defense, despite what James Bond used to think, the Colt .45 was, well, a Colt .45, after all, the .45 ACP was designed to stop drug-crazed Moro tribesmen with one shot, the Springfield was the assault rifle of 1903, World War I and the start of World War II, and the .357, sorry Dirty Harry, is recognized by many people as being the best self-defense caliber to have around. [OK, you 1911 fans. A Federal 230-grain +P HST in .45 ACP has a muzzle velocity of 950 feet per second and an energy of 461 ft-lb. A Federal 158-grain tactical Hydra-Shok in .357 magnum has a velocity and energy of 1240 and 539.]